MWC 2011 Live: Acer Iconia Tab A100, A500 & W500 Hands-in Preview

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Acer has three new tablets of its own, the Acer Iconia Tab A100/101, the Iconia Tab A500/501 and he Iconia Tab W500/501. We’ve seen them all in person today and, just like with the ViewSonic ViewPad tablets, we can’t say we’re particularly impressed with any of them.

The A models are, as you might have guessed, Android tablets, and should you choose an Acer tablet next then go ahead, select one of those. The Iconia Tab W500/501 is a Windows 7 tablet, the kind of mobile device we don’t appreciate even if it comes with a handy dock that transforms it, basically, into a netbook with touchscreen abilities.

The A100 is a 7-inch Android tablet that packs a powerful NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor under the hood. The tablet comes with Android Honyecomb out of the box according to the specs sheet but we discovered that’s just a word for the Android version running on the device is Android 2.2. The tablet handles itself pretty well but without some proper marketing not to mention a bunch of magic sprinkled on top it won’t really have a fighting chance against the Galaxy Tab or the HTC Flyer.

The A500 is the bigger version of the A100 as we’re looking at a 10.1-inch handset. It still packs a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, a 5-megapixel camera, a 2-megapixel on the back. HDMI port, HD support, and Android 3.0 Honeycomb under the hood. Or at least that’s what it will run when it comes out later this year. The A500 is pretty slim too, and, again, if marketed correctly, not to mention perfected, since both units I handled crashed while I was there, could be a cheaper Xoom or Galaxy Tab 10.1 alternative.

Last, and you’ll surely know how we feel about the use of Windows 7 on tablets, we have the tablet/netbook Acer Iconia Tab W700. Windows 7 looks really bad on the device, which is probably a general statement about Win7 tablets. The screen is, at times, unresponsive, and you’d better go for a restart whenever you get annoyed with it. In case you need specific Windows features then you could go for the ViewPad 10, which we also saw today, a dual-booting Android and Windows 7 device that will run Windows 7 only when needed.

On the other hand the Iconia Tab W500 has a full QWERTY keyboard dock that transforms it into your regular Acer netbook (without the touchpad, but with a trackpoint) but if that’s a feature you require then you’d better stick with regular netbooks and laptops.